


Just Forget the World

by justanothersong



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Background Relationships, Canonical Character Death, Cigarettes, Depression, Fix-It, Fuck Canon, Junk science, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Pining, Smoking, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-10 17:02:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18664618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanothersong/pseuds/justanothersong
Summary: ENDGAME SPOILERS. DON'T GET CRANKY.As far as he had been concerned, he’d never see Steve -- this aged Steve, this old man, no longerhisSteve, no longer Bucky’s Stevie -- again.





	Just Forget the World

Bucky watched the city lights at night from the balcony, a cigarette dangling from his hand. So much had changed, but still the city remained, stalwart and true: bright lights and noisy traffic, people going about their business at all hours. It even smelled the same. 

He needed it, the familiarity. It made him feel close to those who were gone, like home wasn’t truly as far away as it seemed.

There had been offers. There would always be a place for him in Wakanda now. Maybe, one day, he’d take up that offer, when his hair would have gone grey and his bones would be tired and aching. One day, maybe. But not now. Now, he needed this.

He needed to stay on and live with the ghosts.

The others were mostly scattered now. Sam still carried on, taking up the shield, trying to live up to a name that Bucky could never forget. Perhaps never forgive, even, if he thought on it too hard, but he tried not to.

Clint had retired. Permanently, he insisted, and Bucky believed him. There was only one thing in the world that could have drawn him back out, and she was gone now. Bucky wondered sometimes, if Clint had told his family what she had done. Why she had made that choice. Clint had seemed to exist in a permanent state of personal dichotomy: loving family man and adrenaline-fueled assassin. Bucky never knew who was first -- Natasha, or the wife. It wasn’t his place to ask. 

He wasn’t blind, either. He knew what Natasha’s close friendships looked like; he had seen it, with Steve. 

But Clint… That was different. They all knew it. Ever Banner.

Bucky wasn’t even sure what became of Banner himself. The scientist had just quietly slunk away, back into the shadows. He had been done with the fighting for a long while by now; he just hadn’t been able to turn his back on their motley little family until the ones he cared for most had been lost forever. 

Flicking ash from his cigarette over the balcony rail, Bucky flashed a rueful grin into the night. It had been easier for some than others, he thought, and sighed.

Pepper had given him this place. The woman was a rock, still managing to carry on after everything she had lost; she could see that Bucky was drowning, that he didn’t know what to do with himself anymore. So she had handed him the keys, told him he always had a home in the Tower. It was nice, to have a place; it was comfortable, but still so empty.

His _days_ were empty. He didn’t want to fight anymore, but there was nothing else left. They still came in droves, crazed geniuses who thought warping the world into their own image would fix everything. As though no one had learned a damn thing, after all that had gone on. As if it had all been for nothing.

It wasn’t as though he needed to work. Saving the world a few times over apparently puts you in good graces with the world government; war crime charges disappeared and suddenly Sgt. James B. Barnes was a hero again, awarded with full hazard pay for the decades he spent as the Fist of Hydra, honorable discharge, and a pension. He’d never want for anything -- anything that could be bought, anyway.

It was hard sometimes, not to be bitter. He’d more or less told Steve to go; they had a way of communicating without words, where looks could be heavy, laden down with more than words could ever really say. He knew Steve wouldn’t be coming back.

It’s not like he could have really offered him anything. What use was it asking him to stay? What could he even have _said_?

“Hey Stevie, I’ve been in love with you since we were kids, and I always figured I was just fucked up and broken inside and I didn’t want to drag you down with me, but now since most of your new friends are dead and we’re stuck in a future neither of us cared to see, wanna give it a go anyhow?”

He snorted to himself in the dark at the very thought.

Steve had deserved better than that, he always had. Deserved better than _Bucky_. 

 

“Those things’ll kill you, ya know.”

Bucky took a deep drag on his cigarette and then tossed it over the balcony, watching the bright burning tip grow smaller and smaller as it fell, until he couldn’t see it at all. He exhaled slow, the smoke looking blue against the night sky that was never truly black, not in New York.

“Yeah, well. Somethin’s bound to, eventually,” Bucky replied. His voice sounded strained to his own ears, and he kept his gaze focused on the streets below.

He didn’t want to look. He didn’t want to see him like this, not again. Steve with silvery hair, a careworn face full of laugh lines and crow’s feet that Bucky didn’t see made, didn’t watch form as they emerged slowly over the years. He’d seen it once, and that was enough.

As far as he had been concerned, he’d never see Steve -- this aged Steve, this old man, no longer _his_ Steve, no longer Bucky’s Stevie -- again.

Bucky didn’t have to think much on how Steve had gotten into the building; Pepper wouldn’t have changed their privileges, not for the ones who were gone. Steve wasn’t gone like the others -- not like Tony, not like Natasha -- but he may as well have been. But the building, the strangely intelligent monument to the genius that Tony Stark had been, it didn’t know any better. It didn’t know that Steve had died for Bucky from the moment he chose to stay in a past that didn’t really belong to him any longer.

His retina and thumbprint scans in the elevator would still work without question.

Steve gave a low chuckle. “Hopefully not any time soon,” he said, and Bucky ducked his head, closing his eyes to feel the cool breeze on his face.

“Yeah?” he asked, eyes still closed. “Who’s hopin’? Sure as hell ain’t me.”

There was a shuffling sound behind him, and Bucky knew what it was. Steve, taking a tentative step forward. Pausing, uncertain if his closeness would be welcome. Stuffing his hands into the pockets of those god awful old man khakis he insisted on wearing. Fitting now, of course. But they hadn’t always been.

“C’mon, Buck,” he said, voice low and pleading. “It ain’t all bad.”

Bucky barked an angry laugh and turned on the spot, ready to remind Steve that it _was_ all that bad, that Steve had taken a lifetime but that it had only been a year for Bucky, a year of dealing with unimaginable loss, with self-pity and seething anger, with wishing for the ice and the mindlessness of Hydra control just to make it all _stop_.

His eyes widened, unshed tears he hadn’t even known he’d been holding falling loose in the shock of the moment. Steve was older than when he’d left, yes, older, but only… only two years, maybe three. The lines on his face, the ones that Bucky had seen on the old man Steve had become, were faint creases at best. He was clean-shaven, his hair a little longer than when he had left and swept back from his face. There was a little bit of hardness in his eyes, but they were still lively and blue and perfect as they’d always been.

Bucky stumbled, his brain working faster than his body and his knees giving out. Steve was right there to catch him, to keep him from hitting the stone floor of the balcony, holding him up and helping him straighten.

“How…?” Bucky asked, shaking his head. “I saw you. I _saw_ you!”

Steve shook his head in response. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I’m not… I’m not sure how all this works. Howard said that you have a choice, you make a decision, and you create a future. He said that maybe, if you go back and you change your mind, maybe it creates a new one, right on top of the other. Took him four years to send me home.”

“You gave your shield to Sam,” Bucky said, practically babbling now. It was so unreal that he wondered inwardly if he were dreaming, if he’d finally manage to get drunk on regular whiskey, or if he’d fallen somewhere and hit his head. “I saw you. You were old.”

Steve nodded, brow furrowing in concentration. “I think I remember that,” he offered. “It’s like… it’s like watching a movie, of watching somebody else playin’ me on a screen. But that’s not my future anymore. That’s not _our_ future.”

“Ours?” Bucky echoed dumbly. The world had shifted; either his addled brain had finally given up, or Steve had come back to him. It couldn’t be.

Steve gave him a trembling smile, and for the first time, Bucky noticed that he wasn’t the only one trying to hold back tears. It almost hurt to see it; he never wanted to be the one to make Steve cry. He had been once before -- the day he broke the news that what they had known was coming had finally arrived, that he’d been drafted.

He knew he should have gone, should have enlisted with the others, taken up arms to fight the good fight before Uncle Sam came around to tap him on the shoulder, but Bucky just hadn’t been able to do it. Steve had needed him then. That was what mattered most.

“I’m sorry it took me so damn long to figure out that home for me is wherever you are,” Steve told him, tears breaking loose and falling down his cheeks.

A bright spark of hope flared to life in Bucky’s chest and before he could even ask -- before he could even stop and take a breath, to try and see if this was all real, if Steve truly meant what it sounded like he was saying… Steve pulled him close and kissed him.

It wasn’t as though he hadn’t been kissed before; Bucky was no stranger to it, and had always been pleased when a night out had found him heading home thoroughly kissed and full of the sort of schoolboy butterflies that always came with new love. 

But even then, Bucky had known it wasn’t what he wanted -- wasn’t what he was made for. _This_ was where he belonged, held close against Steve’s chest, strong arms wrapped around him, thick, calloused fingers in his hair.

Warm, chapped lips, trembling in a chaste kiss, pressed against Bucky’s as though their very lives depended on it.

Maybe, they did. Maybe they had all along.

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Snow Patrol "Chasing Cars".


End file.
